Supplementation protocol

Ok so I'm soon moving into a period with a high workload and have in general just tried to prepare an optimal supplementation for my training to achieve better results. I'm a bit confused about all the vitamins/minerals that interact with each others absorption and just in general timing of certain nutrients etc. Therefore if any experts here could tell me if I'm going the right direction I'd be happy.

172 cm

18 years old

70kg

bf 10-12 I'm guessing

Vit D

I try to average 5k IU/day and I have done 1 month of 10k IU/day. Seeing as the maximal amount to be produced by the body is 10k IU/day here's an example of what I do: Week with 2 days tanning and the other 5 days only sunshine I get is walking in and out of my car 2 times, 2 days that week with 10k IU. Any specific time a day I should take this?

Fish Oil

5g morning

5g evening

Whey prot

20g PWO

Casein Prot

20g PWO

20g Pre bed

ZMA

1 serving pre bed=30mg zinc, 450mg mag and 10.5mg b6

should this be taken on an empty stommach and can I drink milk at the same time (calcium)?

Creatine monohydrate

5g PWO

Beta Alanine

For this I will be following poliquins recommendation and slowling ramping up my dose, starting at about 1g and finishing at about 5-7g. spread evenly during workout. The reason for this is that I got sick and felt nausea last time I used it, if this comes even at small doses I wont use it.

BCAA

15g Pre/duringWO

Multi vit

https://www.emersonecologics.com/Produc ... TWIC6.aspx

one with breakfast and one with last meal of the day.

I drink a lot of milk so I thought calcium supplementation will not be necessary, am I right? Does calcium interfere with magnesium and zinc and should it not be taken at the same time a day? I have seen recommendations of up to 150mg zinc and 2g mag, so would taking 4 doses ZMA for ~2 months before steadying off at 1 serving be an idea?

Any comments for improvements are most welcome, this could be other stuff I should supplement with or comments on nutrient timing etc. Please note I don't want people telling me I should just a clean diet (which I already do for 98% of the time) and drop all supplements... This is also not my current supplementation but will be from about june 10.

You'll want to take the ZMA without milk. Make SURE you don't do ANYTHING to spike insulin for a good two hours before you take it, at least. Obviously slow-digesting proteins and fats shouldn't be a problem, but be careful with everything else. If you've got even moderately high insulin you will be preventing your body from releasing optimum levels of hormones, and thus limiting the effectiveness of the ZMA.

As for the rest, you know what Ido says... get your blood work done. Without knowing the intra-cellular levels of all the minerals it's honestly not possible to make recommendations on calcium and magnesium, apparently. They differ from person to person, and there are interactions between them all, so don't be surprised when Ido reads your post and tells you the same thing! I've been reading up on this and it's quite complex. The blood tests are a good idea. They can be somewhat expensive for the intra-cellular testing apparently, though I haven't seen quotes personally, but that's the only real way to know what's going on. For some minerals like Calcium, serum levels don't tell you squat, because your body will always keep a fairly level amount. It could be leeching calcium from your bones, or you may have f-d up magnesium levels, but you won't know for sure without intra-cellular testing from what I have been reading at http://www.acu-cell.com/mr.html. That's a page on mineral ratios, it's quite interesting. Certainly a professional specialty in itself.

You may very well benefit from more creatine than that. You may want to do 5g in the morning and 5g post workout. Keep in mind that ~90% of it gets pissed out, so it takes around 10g to get 1g into your cells. This is why, again, I recommend Kre-Alkalyn so highly. You can take 2g a day and get the benefits of ~20g creatine monohydrate with none of the bloating or kidney stress. I can't recommend more than 10g of monohydrate a day in good conscience because of the extra and unnecessary kidney stress. It can make you much more likely to form stones, and if you have unknown kidney issues large doses(because of the large amount of waste) could be big trouble down the road. Ugh. You can always cycle between 5g and 10g/day, but especially with heavy workloads the 10g will help a lot.

I'd add Glutamine to your regimen, 10g 1 hour before and 10g 1 hour after the creatine. Also, ribose can help a lot. I am certainly feeling like a freaking machine since I added the ZMA, ribose, glutamine, and BCAA. It's pretty awesome.

Slizzardman,

The casein just before bed WILL spike insulin.

Razz,

Calcium RDA's seem to be way overblown. It comes from an attempt to prevent bone loss, but the whole picture isn't taken into account. Vitamin D is important for proper absorption of calcium and then there's also calcium loss. Calcium is a strong alkaline/base, so when the body is in an acidic state it uses calcium to balance it's pH.

Is the 5g dosages of fish oil at morning and night for a particular reason? Poliquin has said it's better to split your fish oil up. If you have school or something during the day that makes it implausible to take throughout the day that's understandable.

Ed

Razz said:

[i've] tried to prepare an optimal supplementation for my training to achieve better results.

Hey Razz,

My only thought for you is a general one, and that is that it might be helpful to fine-tune or make your training goals more explicit. I.e. strength-gain without weight gain, strength/mass gain, bodyfat recomp, maintain current levels, etc.

Another factor you might consider re: supplementation is sleep: how many hours will you be getting, will you be on a swing/alternating/varied schedule, etc, etc.

best,

j

Thanks. I found out about the serum levels not meaning jack sh't. Anyways what I was looking for was sort of a general guideline of how levels would be if so and so much are taken, but I see that is near impossible. I will stick with general guidelines and not do anything crazy until I have actual numbers.

The fishoil is just for the ease of it so I will look into splitting up the doses.

Glutamine and some sort of carb have been in my interest but not in my budget right now I decided. In the future though. Will do research on the kre-alkalyn, right now I still have some monohydrate left though. Just remember that the bloating can be good for recovery so it's not 100% negative.

jason:

Goal is 100% relative strength which from what I have read means that mass is fine, but excessive bulk (i.e. 500cal extra per day) is not good. So it's sort of a lean-slow-gaining thing, with neural strength being factor #1. Sleep I'm trying to do my best and get 7-8 hours with an occasional nap, but it is hard with school sometimes. In summer break I will make sure to get at least 9 hours but the bedtime is going to vary, no doubt. Workout schedule I'm expecting between 9-12 sessions per week including GPP sessions.

Thanks everyone, more advices are still appreciated

ed x said:

Slizzardman,

The casein just before bed WILL spike insulin.

Yea, he's going to have to go for an egg or plant-based protein. Or a steak hehehe!

So this scenario would be fine?

6:30 dinner

8: bread with tuna/macarel or some low carb high protein with whatever fat it contains.

10: ZMA+omelet+fish oil

That shouldn't be a problem as far as I am aware.

Just FYI, taking 2g of fish oil before a meal has shown to greatly reduce any insulin spike.

Then, there's also cinnamon! Get yourself some cinnamon and have some (1/2 a teaspoon) with every meal. It also helps prevent any insulin spike.

Also, don't worry too much about spreading out the fish oil, if it's a hassle. As Ido has said about other things, it ain't worth making cortisol over.

ed x said:

Then, there's also cinnamon! Get yourself some cinnamon and have some (1/2 a teaspoon) with every meal..

although i wouldn't recommend taking it like this

EAJH36kmjIY

HAHA Tsoonami That looks like me when I tried to swallow my BCAA powder in the same way

slizzardman said:

You'll want to take the ZMA without milk. Make SURE you don't do ANYTHING to spike insulin for a good two hours before you take it, at least. Obviously slow-digesting proteins and fats shouldn't be a problem, but be careful with everything else. If you've got even moderately high insulin you will be preventing your body from releasing optimum levels of hormones, and thus limiting the effectiveness of the ZMA.

As for the rest, you know what Ido says... get your blood work done. Without knowing the intra-cellular levels of all the minerals it's honestly not possible to make recommendations on calcium and magnesium, apparently. They differ from person to person, and there are interactions between them all, so don't be surprised when Ido reads your post and tells you the same thing! I've been reading up on this and it's quite complex. The blood tests are a good idea. They can be somewhat expensive for the intra-cellular testing apparently, though I haven't seen quotes personally, but that's the only real way to know what's going on. For some minerals like Calcium, serum levels don't tell you squat, because your body will always keep a fairly level amount. It could be leeching calcium from your bones, or you may have f-d up magnesium levels, but you won't know for sure without intra-cellular testing from what I have been reading at http://www.acu-cell.com/mr.html. That's a page on mineral ratios, it's quite interesting. Certainly a professional specialty in itself.

You may very well benefit from more creatine than that. You may want to do 5g in the morning and 5g post workout. Keep in mind that ~90% of it gets pissed out, so it takes around 10g to get 1g into your cells. This is why, again, I recommend Kre-Alkalyn so highly. You can take 2g a day and get the benefits of ~20g creatine monohydrate with none of the bloating or kidney stress. I can't recommend more than 10g of monohydrate a day in good conscience because of the extra and unnecessary kidney stress. It can make you much more likely to form stones, and if you have unknown kidney issues large doses(because of the large amount of waste) could be big trouble down the road. Ugh. You can always cycle between 5g and 10g/day, but especially with heavy workloads the 10g will help a lot.

I'd add Glutamine to your regimen, 10g 1 hour before and 10g 1 hour after the creatine. Also, ribose can help a lot. I am certainly feeling like a freaking machine since I added the ZMA, ribose, glutamine, and BCAA. It's pretty awesome.

**************What does Ribose do for you ?

Brandon Green

Ribose is a sugar that helps synthesize DNA and RNA, however it is synthesized in the body from glucose.

Used to do a long time ago. Cut it out when I couldn't find it as easily at the supplement stores. I never did seem to see an increase or decrease but if I black boxed correctly maybe I would or wouldn't. Those were also the days of whatever programming. Throw weights around, lift heavier weights, do some assistance stuff. Rarely more than 5r of anyting really heavy or powerful and never more than 10-15 on assistance stuff (DB stuff, T-rows, pullups, etc).

Any protein will cause insulin secretion. Protein is just as insulinogenic as carbs.

Someone pointed about sleep.

I'm really not an expert about supplements, but I truly am on sleep! I manage 9-10h everyday, and I think it's way more efficient (and without any money effort) than products.

I take a cheap multivitamin on training days, I think it's enough for me since I eat healthy and I am both young and not enough advanced to notice any difference (or at least this is what I think - feel free to disappoint me ).

Sleep is mega-important!

Yep, I sleep as much as I possibly can By the way does anyone have any studies that show fish oils effect of decreasing insulin spikes? or cinnamon for that case.. can't find anything that directly proves it.

from what I remember, taking fish oil and cinnamon regularly increases your sensitivity to insulin

but it's not like taking some fish oil and sprinkling some cinnamon with a large amount of sugar and what not is going to save you

Yes obviously it won't save me, but even small amounts could make a difference and why not (try) do things the optimal way?

Razz, Check out Rob Wolf's podcasts, there is good information pertaining to the effects of fish oil and cinnamon.

Thanks I will

fish oil has proven benefits, and cinnamon is delicious

so there is really no downside

yuri said:

and cinnamon is delicious

You got it